Customer Reviews

Applying Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1: Component-Based Development for the J2EE Platform (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is similar in content to the Monson-Haefel EJB 1.1 book. For EJB beginners, it is somewhat more readable than the latter book, and complete blocks of code are given (for an entire EJB bean class for example) in the book pages. However, as a book that only covers EJB 1.1 spec and is not application server specific, it is rather late to the market and as a result its value is somewhat reduced.

The pluses of the book: the strongest selling point of the book is that it does an excellent job in explaining the EJB API (this may be attributed to the fact that the leading author of the book is a member of the Sun's J2EE architecture team). Things I find very useful include discussions on varies methods defined in the EJBObject and EJBHome and the Bean interfaces, the different life cycle behaviors among various type of EJB's, the container-bean contract, and container services such as transaction management and security control, all in a very clear manner. Although there is no integrated application in the book, unlike the Wrox Press's WebLogic book, the EJB design in this book is more sophisticated. The best practices of using value objects, dependent classes, helper classes, and database connection are all well-demonstrated throughout the code and clearly explained.

The minuses of the book: in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, this book does not have a companion website to allow one to download the source code. It doesn't provide instructions to set up an EJB server to run the samples, and coverage on how to invoke EJB's from JSP and Java clients is limited.

My suggestion: if you are new to EJB and don't care too much about the upcoming EJB 2.0 CMP service and message-driven beans at this point, this is a good alternative to the Monson-Haefel book. On the other hand, if you already own other EJB books or have hands-on experience, I think you should wait for the 2nd Ed. of the book by Ed Roman et al. to come out in the summer. As a side note, from what I understand the new Roman book promises to cover all the new EJB 2.0 stuff and uses WebLogic 6.0 for its samples.

The first EJB book I've seen with the actual SQL for the tables it uses. The book does not state it's compliance, but I am very familiar with the 1.1 spec and it covers the 1.1 spec with nothing new from my perspective, so I assume it's 1.1 compliant. The book is short and sweet with plenty of examples. The title's keyword of "applying" is exactly correct. It shows application and not theory. If you want theory go for Enterprise Javabean's by O'Reilly. When you are done with that and ready for practical applications, come to this book. I highly recomend it for applying EJB.

The author expends his time and energy explaining the basics of J2EE platform and the intuition that went into developing the specification. Once you get the basics, you can equip yourself with the advanced stuff either from specialized books or from the manuals. The are some spots where the evangelizing gets a bit much. But hey it's crisp, clear and concise (done in 352 pages). If you want to develop a system you need to get a more "tutorial" type of book such as that of the wrox team, or from ths sun website. Buying a tools book may prove useless as the application/web containers versions change often and you may want to invest in that only closer the job one!

a good book if you want to get the concept of EJB. not a good one if you want to get some vendor-specific information. and, though the book publish late, it doesn't cover much on EJB 2.

Beginning on page 17 this book takes the reader on a fantasy trip through the world of EJB and J2EE. I have reviewed this book with fellow consultant from BEA and we have found an alarming number of mis-statements about EJBs. This explains why a high number of application development efforts are are in jepordy. As far as reading, the book is very enjoyable and would rank high as fiction.

This new edition of " Applying Enterprise JavaBeans" is a well written look at the Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 specification. The explanations of the various topics are in-depth and yet easy to follow. The authors provide diagrams and supporting code samples demonstrating how to write the code for each topic covered. They also provide explanations of when a particular technology is appropriate for your applications. The book even has a glossary so that if you forgot what an acronym stands for, you can look it up.

The book covers all the usual topics one would expect in a book on EJBs. It starts with a general overview and then takes a look at each of the various bean types. Session beans (stateful and stateless), message driven beans, and entity beans are each covered. An application example is discussed which includes packaging of the application for production. The following chapter covers integrating web services into your EJB applications. Subsequent chapters cover transactions and security. The authors have done a great job of explaining not just how to code EJBs but also how they work within an application server, which you need to know to use EJBs successfully.

The book is similar to the O'Reilly book in size and scope although this book has the advantage of being more current. Overall, the book is well written, easy to follow, and extremely useful. If you are new to EJBs or if you are looking for a book to bring you up to date on the new specification then this book will make a good choice.

As an entry level book to Enterprise Java Beans it was a good book, but nothing special. Currently this book (1st edition) is very much outdated because of the new EJB specs. You would do better buying another EJB book.

I was disappointed with this book. Based upon the word 'applying' in the title I thought I would receive a more advanced book that would delve into advanced issues of design, implementation, and the lessons learned from the first round of EJB applications. However I received just another 'learning EJB' book and it is marginal at even that task. The author does provide extensive code examples, however too much ink was wasted displaying and discussing code that had little or nothing to do with the concept that was presented. Only the most basic topics are covered.

I found this book really disappointing because I was looking for the"advanced" part and found only the same stuff you can find in any EJB book. What's more, it reads an awful lot like the spec, including the same ambiguity in the use of the term "EJB object." I expect a book by the lead architect to not do that. So the book is okay as another basic EJB book, but since it promises more, it's very disappointing.

I'm a bit surprised by many of the reviews of this book. Overall, I think it is a fairly solid coverage of EJBs. However, I think it tocuhes on many topics without providing enough depth to make that topic clear and useful. One of the worst examples of this is Chapter 6, entitled Using JMS and Connectors For Communication. The chapter has a rather brief high level coverage of JMS which is too short and sporadic to be terribly useful. Then is jumps to J2EE Connectors which it discusses for one and a half pages. In those 1.5 pages it gives no examples and almost no concrete information about how to use connectors. The most useful thing it says is it tells you another book you can buy to actually learn how to use connectors. Since the chapter is called "Using JMS and Connectors..." I would expect more than 1.5 pages of fluffy coverage of connectors. But at least it told me what book I should have bought instead.
If you want a high-level view of a lot of topics, without a whole lot of depth, then I think this book is a good choice. If you want a more thorough coverage of EJBs, I'd recommend Head First EJB, Enterprise JavaBeans (O'Reilly Press), or Professional EJB (Wrox Press.)